


The Stars and I

by auselysium



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, M/M, not sure the violence is graphic but better safe than sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 06:19:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18463232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: It was June 2008.Michael Guerin liked me back.And my father hated us both.Or what happened the summer before Alex left.





	The Stars and I

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the tags, not sure the descriptions of Jesse's attack on Michael are graphic, but there is definitely mention of blood and pain. Poor Guerin.
> 
> First fic in this fandom! Hi, I'm the angst queen.

It was June 2008.

Michael Guerin liked me back.

And my father hated us both.

His attack stopped eventually with a sudden stumble backwards away from Michael’s side, his arm still raised for the next blow, as if pushed by some imaginary force. Michael sobbed between ragged breaths, head bowed on his knees. His untouched hand clenched knuckle-white in desperation.

I’d been frozen through it all. Palms pressed and trembling, tears flowing. _So this is what a Jesse Manes beating looks like from the other side_ , I’d found myself thinking with twisted fascination.

Gasping, my father looked at me and threw the hammer across the floor. A wipe at his jaw with the back of his hand left Michael’s blood smeared across his face.

“Go inside and get cleaned up,” he ordered. As if I, standing there covered in my male lover’s spit and sweat and cum, was far filthier than he was, covered in the same man’s blood.

I took one look at Michael. He cradled his hand to his chest where he’d collapsed to the floor, tucked in on himself as if trying to hide. His eyes were clenched shut and he did not see me go.

I only just managed to get under the shower spray. Hot water pummeled my back, numbing and unrelenting. I stood, motionless yet vibrating. Unsure how I would ever be able to untangle Michael’s heady moans of pleasure from his screams that came too shortly after.

My father had been waiting with a bucket and a sponge. He hadn’t needed to tell me what I was to clean next.

Blood had seeped into the wooden grains of the work bench. A lasting stain. As I squeezed the sponge over the ruins, Michael’s blood ran pale and thin to the floor. It felt like I cleaning up after some gruesome autopsy. Or a crime scene.

Which is exactly what it was.

I can’t remember how long it took to clean up Michael’s blood. But I did. Every drop. Clearing it away with attentiveness bordering tenderness. As if this expended fluid was him, his destroyed body. As if this were my penance.

I did this, all the while frantically worrying where he’d gone after his truck had peeled through our backyard and away.

“Come on in,” my father said as if nothing had happened a while later. “Dinner’s ready in 10.”

*

The next night, alone in my room - grounded, phone taken away, music defaning - I saw the lights in the shed turn on through my window.

It had to be him.

Sneaking out that same window (like I had hundreds of times for my own sanity), I made my way across the dark yard.

“Guerin, it’s just me.” Hadn’t I said those exact words before?’

“Jesus.” He flinched anyway, pulling his hand, now wrapped in an oozing cloth, that looked little more than an old undershirt, towards his chest once more. His eyes were wide, terrified and they didn’t relax much at the sight of me.

“Have you not gone to the ER?” I asked, immediately reaching for him. He pulled away, more timid than I thought him capable.

“I can’t.”

“If it’s that you can’t pay…”

“No.” He cut me off quickly, letting out a shaky breath. “No doctors. It’ll be fine.”

We shared a look. No, it wouldn’t be fine. Not now or ever. But even so, Michael turned away and kept stuffing his duffle bag, single handed. The discussion was ended.

“I just need to get my things and then I’ll be gone.”

“Where will you go?” I asked.

“Still got my truck. It’s not as cold at night as it was at the end of the school year,” he said at my concerned look.

“What if it rains?”

MIchael turned. His face a barren, twisted smirk. “Rain? In the dessert? During the summer?”

The puff of air I let out could almost be misconstrued as a laugh. Michael continued gathering his things with a heavy sigh. I’d not realized just how settled-in he’d become here. Made this small space of bare plywood a home.

With another bleak look, Michael handed me my brother’s guitar.

“Guess I won’t be able to use that anymore.”

I took it, fingers circling around the neck next to his so they touch. I was desperate to feel him whole. Michael pulled away without reaction. But even in that flash of proximity, I could see he was utterly shattered, like he hadn’t seen a moments sleep at all the night before. I hadn’t really slept either, but Michael looked like he was dealing with demons even bigger than Jesse Manes.

“Can I come see you?” I asked.

Michael stood, unflinching eyes rimmed with weary tears. He considered my question for a long time. Shrugged. “Sure. If you don’t think it’ll...”

I stepped towards him.

“But not tonight.” He stepped back, putting his good hand between us. ‘There’s...still some stuff I’m dealing with.”

“Ok,” I said.

I wanted to kiss him. Hold him. Instead, I helped him carry some books to the car and watched his tail lights drive away until I couldn’t see them anymore.

*

He didn’t call for over a week.

“Hello?”

It was the landline for the house that had started ringing, which was strange enough in itself. But we’d never talked on the phone before either, so the whole thing felt new.

“Hey, it’s...Gu...It’s Michael.”

He gave me directions: _Go two miles past Mazas Farm on Old Stage Road. Look for the break in the fence. Follow the tracks. You’ll find me._

And I did.

He was waiting. Sitting in the bed of his truck, looking towards the sky.

“I’m glad you called.” I said, settling next to him.

“I’m glad your dad wasn’t home when you did.”

“You could have called my cell, you know. Or texted like a normal teenager.”

“Phone’s dead,” he answered, with a futile lift of his shoulders. “Aren’t a lot of places to plug in your charger in the desert. I even had to look up your house phone number in a phone book. That I had to find at the library. Can you believe they still make those?”

“What? Libraries?” I deadpanned.

Michael actually laughed. Smiled with teeth. His curls fell over his face and I scooted closer so that we were nearly touching, hip to hip.

He’d set up a small little campground for himself. A fire pit with a chair pulled next to it. A few pots and a camping mug, freshly cleaned, were set off to the side. It was as comfortable as a patch of desert could be, I supposed. But it wasn’t a home. It wasn’t even a tool shed, which seemed to be the best anyone was willing to offer Michael.

The thought nearly made me choke.

“I’m so sorry, Michael.”

He hung his head. The almost imperceptible shake brushed away my concern and my atonement. Instead, his jaw became set, teeth aligned behind closed lips.

“Did he hurt you?” His voice was tight, defensive and protective. When I’m silent for a beat he turned to look. His eyes rode a dangerous edge of action.

 _Of course my father hurt me_ , I wanted to say. Watching Michael being brutalized had hurt me more than any slap, any bunch, and fowl slur my father had ever thrown my way. That had been the whole point, hadn’t it?

“No,” I answered. “Not this time.”

Not sensing the lie, or perhaps because of it, his eyes softened, falling to my lips then back up again. The skin of my face reddened. I tilted my head like I had that first time, the time he'd turned away from my advances and started strumming his guitar in panic.

But this time, with an exhale as mild as the wild night, our lips met, melted, with relief.

His sleeping bag was hardly enough cushioning against the corrugated metal, and yet we lay back, together, making do as long as our bodies remained close.

I reached for the hem of shirt, the fly of his pants. With Michael’s good hand trapped between his body and the truck, he made a noise of frustration.

Then embarrassed, almost innocent: “I… can't.” The wounds of his hand had scabbed over, but his fingers were still swollen and blue. He’d winced as he tried to flex the mangled digits.

“It's ok,” I breathed, rotating our bodies so his was beneath mine. We hadn’t gotten around to this position the first time and I liked it. Settled into the solid shape of him. I trailed my fingers on his jaw. Kissed him long. “Just let me.”

He swallowed, nodded. I took care of him the way I wanted to. Careful and exploring. I felt tears as he came in my hand. My father, for all his trying, still had not robbed us of this.

After, I rested my head on his chest as it rose and fell in a sated, by slowing tempo. His heart doing the same beneath the bunched of fabric of his shirt. He pressed a lingering kiss to my hair and I let my hand still by his hip.

It was unspoken, but understood: I would spend the night with him.

“You’ve been ok staying here? Out in the open like this?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” he said. “I’ve always felt safe under the stars.

I peered up at him to find his eyes open, gazing. “Why?”

“Cause the stars…They owe me.”

I didn’t know how to unpack the bitterness in his his voice. So instead, I snuggled in close and his embrace became tighter, more fierce. The night air was dropping quickly, though, so perhaps he had just appreciated the extra body heat.

“Next time will you at least let me bring a tent?”

Michael’s snort seemed to echo across the valley.

*

It was a July wind storm, not rain, that forced us into the tent early, before the sun had even set, one evening. The dust devils that played across the landscape weren’t enough to worry these New Mexico natives.

Instead, we sat cross legged facing each other on top of our sleeping bags, which we’d zipped together the night before, and played a hardcore game of Egyptian Rat Screw.

“I quite literally have a handicap. I can’t slap the deck with this hand,” Michael said, showing off the fresh pink skin over unevenly healed bones and mottled with scars.

“Then use our other hand. You’re still probably gonna beat me, anyway” I’d said. And he had. “When do you leave for UNM? Do you have orientation soon?”

  
“N’aw,” Michael deflected as he shuffled the deck. “I decided not to go.”

“Why not? Rumor was you got a full ride.”

“Rumor was right.” He shrugged with a pondering pout. “I just decided college wasn’t for me. What about you? You headed out east for some fancy music school?”

My laugh sounded more like a whimper. I focused on putting my cards in order, black suits first, clubs then spades.

“I, uh, actually just signed up for the Air Force.”

“What?” Michael was disgusted. “Why? Alex, you’re nothing like your old man.”

I gave my cards a helpless look. “He brought the paperwork home yesterday and told me either I signed on the dotted line or he’d make me sign. I leave for Basic in San Antonio in two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” Michael exhaled. His mouth was open and slack, eyes staring at me with what I dared to interpret as disappointment.

“Yeah,” I said. Michael tossed his cards aside, tackling me to the ground. There was no time to waste on games now that we had an expiration date.

*

“Well, well, well. Private Manes. I never thought I’d be a guy with a soldier kink but...”

Michael stood at my shoulder in the mirror, running his hands over my blue camouflage fatigues.

My dad had orders out of town for the weekend and we’d had the house to ourselves. We’d slept in a bed. Showered together. Made coffee in the mornings.

He’d carefully held the clippers to my head, watching with a nervous giggle as my hair had fallen to the floor in longish-locks, and gave me the military high-and-tight cut. Then he’d yelped and run from the room as I’d turned the clippers back on and suggested I give him the same ‘do.

As if I would ever touch those precious curls.

“Airman not soldier,” I corrected, smoothing the jacket down my chest. “And I’ll enter as an E-3, not a private.”

“Whatever,” he said with a brusk wave of his hand.

“I would say I’ll write you while I’m gone but I don’t think your truck has a mailbox.”

“If I keep my phone charged, will you text me?”

“When I can, sure.”

Michael picked the matching uniform cap from my bed, his mood having changed. He fingered the brim and asked, “They’re gonna send you over there aren’t they? Afghanistan? Iraq? Some shit?”

“Probably,” I stated with a grim nod. Michael had stopped shaving in the past couple weeks, keeping his five o’clock shadow neatly trimmed instead. It suited him and I ran my fingers over the stubble of his chin. “That’s the point of serving right? To fight.”

Michael shook his head with angry and frightened futility. I could see just how much he loathed the thought.

“Whatever happens,” his voice was painfully raw. “However long it takes and whatever state you’re in, just promise me you’ll come home to Roswell.”

“Is that what you want?”

This was the first glimmering mention of anything resembling our future and even though it felt eons away and impossible, like some ill-conceived mirage, I let myself believe in it. Michael nodded along, holding my gaze and not looking away.

“Then you have to promise you’ll be here when I do.”

He kissed me, thumbs on my jaw and fingers on the closely shaved edges of my hair. “Promise.”

*

My father’s cruel exactness was replaced by drill sergeants and hell weeks where I didn’t sleep for over 72 hours. Then marching orders to a base in Alabama where I slept in barracks with a dozen other men. Then overseas to Ramstein, Germany for another tour and then the dreaded order to the middle East, not once but twice.

Years later, my nightmares were not riddled with Jesse Manes’ fist or Michael Guerin’s screams but IEDs and insurgents and failed missions that resulted in loss of life and my own limb.

So it wasn't that I had willingly forgotten everything that had happened upon my return to Roswell, I just didn't dare remember. War had been no place for thoughts of soft things. Of young boys holding each other in their sleep. Or golden curls and the brush of guitar strings.

Those memories were no longer my own, but belonging to the kid I’d never be again.

Still, I came home. Just like I’d promised.

He was still there, just as he had.

But the stretch of time had made things, once sweet, acrid. Ease and magnetism was replaced with the pain of goodbye and years of selective silence. Pending returns of promises made felt like pity now instead of some cosmically decreed outcome.

Guerin pressed to the breaking point. And I walked away. Again and again.

And I found myself thinking that those stars that I’d looked to that summer from the back of Guerin’s truck? Those that I’d tried to find through my night-vision goggles in a different desert an entire world away?

Those stars? They owed us both now.

**Author's Note:**

> Would love to meet some more RNM/Malex fans! I'm auselysium over on Tumblr too


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